Page 121 of The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland
Up until this exact moment, Beatrice had always thought of lighthouses as comforting. They were emblems of safe passage, weren’t they? A welcome sight on a stormy night.
How wrong she’d been.
A lighthouse was the direst warning of all.Dangerous rocks. Unnavigable terrain. If you value your life, stay far away.
To her father, Beatrice mumbled, “Call me if you hear anything.”
Then she fled.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
They say it’s darkest before the dawn, but that’s a load of horseshit, ain’t it? It’s dark when there’s no light. So quit whining and light a fucking match, okay?
—Evie Oxby, in conversation with Dax Shepard on theArmchair Expertpodcast
Hours passed. The only place Beatrice could think of to be was on the deck of theForget-Me-Knot. At least there, she could look at the long stretch of shops on the main street—she could view tourists eating ice creams and locals getting their groceries, going on about their business as if the world wasn’t ending.
If she kept her gaze fixed firmly enough on the street, maybe she’d see Minna slipping through the clumps of people.
She kept her phone tightly in her hand.
Every thirty minutes or so, her father sent a text in response to her nagging.Nothing yet.
No, still nothing.
No, honey, still nothing. Yes, people are looking.
Then,Someone said they might have seen her near the river but
A terrifying pause was filled only with the bubbles that said her father was still typing.
but it was a just kid fishing who looked like her.
On the houseboat to the right, a man was scrubbing the film of salt off the windows. Three kayakers paddled past. The woman in the back kayak screeched at two teenage boys that they were doing it wrong, though she was the only one wobbling enough to be in danger of falling out. Because of what Beatrice had done, had said, Minna was running toward a father she thought loved her, but who would kill her and destroy her soul for his own gain. Maybe he’d already gotten to her. But what would that look like, what did it actually mean? Would he take physical form if he took Minna’s energy? How would he do it? Who would protect Minna if she was up against him, alone?
And Beatrice couldn’t even assist in the search.
She squeezed her phone tightly, then brought up Grant’s face in Contacts. She stared at him for a moment. That crease in his cheek, almost-but-not-quite a dimple. At one time, she’d loved touching that with the tip of her finger. It felt like a really long time ago.
She pressed Call.
The hope in his “Hello? Beatrice?” made her even sadder than she’d been twenty seconds before.Whydid he want this to be amicable? Why didn’t he want to scream and fight and burn what they’d had to the ground?
“Why did you marry me?”
To his credit, he rolled with it. “Because I loved you.” A breath. “I still do.”
Somehow, she managed not to snort. “Okay, but that’s not what I mean. I guess, why did you love me?”
“I love you because you’re kind and smart and—”
“Can you tell me the truth, please? Like, cut the obvious canned answers. Tell me something that would apply to our relationship, and no one else’s.” She paused. “And be as honest as you can.”
She heard him take a deep breath. Then he said, “I loved you because you knew everything, and because of that, nothing ever seemed difficult when you were around. I’d been so overwhelmed with everything when I met you—you remember how it was.”
She remembered. He’d had half custody of his kids when they’d met, and his place had looked like a frat house the day after a tailgate. Laundry moldered in smelly, towering piles. Wet towels hung from bedposts and lamps. She’d found a pile of overdue bills next to the toilet once, and he’d sworn he had no idea how they got there. “I remember,” she said.
Would Dulcina remember that Grant’s toothbrush head needed to be replaced every ninety days? Would she know to purchase his favorite kind of boxers every year? Or would she be sensible and tell Grant to do his own shopping, the way Beatrice should have and never had?
